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Lewes-Uckfield Rail Link
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Vernon Coaker.]
6 pm
Norman Baker (Lewes) (LD): I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise yet again in the House the issue of the missing rail link between Lewes and Uckfield. I am pleased to see the Minister in his place and I am sorry that the Minister of State, Department for Transport is not here, but I know that he wanted to get back to his constituency to vote in the European elections. I wish that all members of the public took as much interest in the voting as he clearly does.
This debate has run for some considerable time. The Minister will know that, ironically, the Lewes-Uckfield line survived the Beeching cuts and was closed only to facilitate a road scheme in 1969. It was closed, I want to put on record, against the wishes of British Rail, which had been busy shutting railway lines up and down the country throughout that decade. Almost immediately after it closed, there was a vociferous campaign to re-open it, which has been going ever since. That is witnessed by the fact that the track bed between Lewes and Uckfield has significantly been protected in the structure plan and the local plans of the Lewes and Wealden district councils, and it is evinced by the fact that the campaign to re-open the line is not solely the responsibility of a small number of train enthusiasts, but is supported widely throughout the community.
The campaign is, for example, supported by Liberal Democrat-controlled Lewes district council and Conservative-controlled Wealden district council and East Sussex county council. Members of this House of all three parties support it—for example, myself as a Lib Dem, the Conservative hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), whom I see in his place tonight, and the Minister's colleague, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper), among others. Indeed, it is difficult to find anyone at an elected level anywhere in East Sussex who opposes the re-opening of the line. Town councils, district councils and the county council, which has made it a priority in its transport works, support it. I know that the Government want to give due weight to local communities, so I ask the Minister to reflect on the strong feeling expressed in all quarters in favour of re-opening the line.
The line has come close to being re-opened on a couple of occasions since its demise. There was a time in the 1980s when Chris Green, then working for the nationalised British Rail, pledged money to re-opening. Sadly, on that occasion, the county council was not interested, so the proposal fell. Even the much maligned Connex company, coming towards the end of its franchise, recognised the value of the line as a diversionary route to London and indicated as part of its proposals for franchise renewal that it would endorse its re-opening. For reasons that we all understand, Connex then lost its franchise.
It is deeply frustrating for Members who consistently supported the re-opening to encounter a situation that is like one of those Christmas cracker games in which a plastic container has four or five aluminium balls that have to be lined up and placed into all the holes at the same time. As soon as we get all the balls in bar one, one
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pops out—a different one every time. All the balls are now in place at local level, with everyone supporting the proposal locally, but we now face something that the Minister will understand because of what he has inherited with Railtrack—a rail industry that is incapable of delivering such schemes. That is the problem that I want the Minister to try to help to overcome, or at least to move along in that direction.
There is no doubt that the campaign to re-open is strong, because it makes so much sense. I stress to the Minister that it is not based on sentimentality or some vision of steam trains winding their way between Lewes and Uckfield. It is based on solid, common-sense arguments that the Government support as part of their policy.
There is a very good environmental case for reopening the line. The A26 between Lewes and Uckfield is becoming more and more heavily trafficked. More people want to travel from Uckfield and Crowborough, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Wealden, to work in Lewes and on the south coast, where there is a high level of employment for white-collar workers. Also, people want to go to Brighton and Hove. The Minister's colleagues in that area are keen to stress the importance of regeneration, and reinstating the link between Lewes and Uckfield would contribute to that.
The link is also important in terms of social inclusion, which is another matter that is high on the Government's agenda. Many people in the so-called rich south-east lack access to private transport, and the bus and rail networks are lifelines for them. The short gap—of only seven miles—between Lewes and Uckfield is like a key tooth missing from a mouth. Its absence stands out. It makes no sense, economically or otherwise, for the line from London Victoria to wind all the way down through Oxted to Uckfield, and stop just seven miles short of the Lewes junction. At Lewes, there are a great many more interchanges, and extending the line that far would make a great deal of sense in rail terms.
The proposal makes sense in other ways, too. The Minister will know from his Labour colleagues in Brighton and Hove that there is a severe problem with the train path capacity between Brighton and London. No more train paths are available because of the bottleneck at Haywards Heath and Balcombe. There is no way to get around the problem. It is inconceivable that a new viaduct and tunnel could be built at Balcombe, because of the cost involved. The alternative would be to improve the Arundel line, but that is a long diversion—the distance between Brighton and London is 80 miles.
From the strategic point of view, the simplest and cheapest way to provide extra capacity between the south coast and London would be to reopen the Lewes-Uckfield line and use that link as an alternative route. For my constituents, that would provide a daily, direct service from the major port of Newhaven and the major town of Seaford to London, without the need to change at Lewes. There are therefore a great many reasons why this proposal makes sense.
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The Minister will understand my concern that the Government office for the south-east has suggested that the proposal should not be brought forward as a priority, nor implemented as soon as possible. I think that both things should happen. In addition, GOSE has suggested that it should be deleted, on affordability grounds, from the draft regional transport strategy. No doubt GOSE officials will have told the Minister that they have been bombarded with objections to an idea that is ill-timed and ludicrous. I hope that further thought will be given to the matter.
I wrote to GOSE, and I am sure that other hon. Members have done the same. Unusually, the letter was passed by an official for reply by a Minister. Things are usually done the other way around. The Minister for Housing and Planning wrote to me on 13 May, and his comments concerned me. I was grateful that he should have written to me, and a ministerial reply to a letter to an official is always helpful, but he said that the benefits accruing from re-opening the Lewes-Uckfield line would be
"largely confined to the improvement of travel opportunities between the specific urban centres involved."
That is not true, for the reasons that I have given. Everyone who has looked at the matter in depth—including consultants used by the county council, and others—recognise the strategic value of the route.
The Minister added that the link
"would not achieve the objective of providing and alternative and competitive main railway corridor to London because of the topography of the route."
It is unclear why the Minister made that statement, which is not true either. The proposal involves the most easily adaptable alternative route. If, by the use of the word "topography", the Minister means that part of the line adjacent to Lewes had been built on, everyone knows that that is the case. It has been factored in for decades, ever since the line closed. There is an alternative: the existing Hamsey loop could be linked up very quickly, by means of a short stretch of new rail, to the existing Lewes-London line. It is not true, therefore, that the alteration could not be made, which is what I think the Minister intended that sentence to mean. I think that he has been badly briefed.
Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con):
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and congratulate him on securing this debate. Will he join me in congratulating the people involved in the Wealden line campaign for their work in keeping this matter under consideration? Does he understand why so many of my constituents are frustrated? They have to travel from Uckfield and Crowborough to Haywards Heath or Tonbridge Wells to use a train service, and are not able to use a line that runs through their home towns. Does he agree that the Strategic Rail Authority's priorities are misguided? It wants to build high-speed links between London and Edinburgh, when the real crisis in our rail system is in the overcrowded south-east? It takes an hour and a half to get from Uckfield to London by train—longer than it takes to go from London to Doncaster.
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